A Centennial Scrapbook

Treasured memories from a brief but thrilling visit to Expo ’67

As we begin to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, I still remember 1967—Canada’s 100th birthday. There were parades and Bobby Gimby’s song “CA-NA-DA,” and people and towns were encouraged to create a Centennial Project.

I collected Centennial coins and still have one of the dollar bills that doesn’t have

the flag on top of the Parliament Buildings. One of the other things I kept from that year was a scrapbook.

In January 1967, I was in Grade 6. My teacher, Mrs. Peever, handed me a scrapbook. I am sure that scrapbooks were given out to many schoolchildren in Canada in an effort to get them involved in the Centennial celebrations. It contained maps and historical facts about Canada, and, of course, empty pages to be filled. This scrapbook was a project to be completed and graded at the end of the year.

In July, my parents, older brother and I took a bus trip to Expo ’67 in Montreal. It was a very quick trip. Early one morning, we boarded Fowlers Bus in Bancroft, Ont., and off we went to Montreal, where we stayed overnight and then came back very late the next day. Basically we only had parts of two days to enjoy the spectacle that was Expo ’67.

We visited the British, Russian and Canadian pavilions, among others. We also rode the monorail, and walked and walked and walked. I remember my father wore a suit—he must have been so hot! Mom had wisely brought an insulated bag full of drinks and snacks and my brother had to carry the bag all over Expo. I collected any and all things that I thought were Centennial related.

When I got home, I pasted the brochures and picture books that I’d picked up into my scrapbook. The blurry black-and-white photos that I took at Expo ’67 made the book feel a bit more personal. I then filled it out with articles that I cut from newspapers and anything that I thought was interesting and pertained to Canada’s 100th birthday.

Back at school, late in the fall and now in Grade 7, I handed my scrapbook in. For my year-long efforts, Mrs. Peever graded my project as “good.”

I hadn’t looked at that scrapbook for more than 45 years, but when I dug it out of the trunk and started flipping through it, memories of a wonderful year flooded back—really good memories! ■

was set down on the wooden floor, I began working on straightening the walls and getting it levelled. A new roof was built over top of the existing roof, so the interior still has the original exposed huge log rafters. I then installed a woodstove and continued working on the interior when winter set in. The logs were stripped to bare wood and new mortar was plastered between them. There is no electricity at this site, so a generator was used to operate power tools. This was all very hard work, but I often thought how hard the pioneers worked building it originally without any modern tools.

In the summer of 1998, the exterior was fin- ished and a log railing installed around the deck. The eavestrough drains into a large holding tank that gravity-feeds a waterworks system. During the next several years, grass was planted, a willow fence built around the yard, and a dock was built into the river. I taught myself how to do stone masonry work by building a round stone fire pit along with a stone well with an old-fashioned working hand-pump on top. I was getting pretty good at doing stonework, so I built a 40foot retaining wall along the riverbank. Now running low on ideas of what to build next, I decided to build a stone playhouse for our grandchildren, which turned into a 50-foot tall lighthouse ( a story about it was published in the August- September 2014 issue of Our Canada.)

Over the past 20 years, my wife Reba and I have enjoyed many fun-filled celebrations and gettogethers with our family and friends at our little oasis. n